Short hops and hard knocks with Red Sox beat writer Ian Browne.

Optimism on Cameron; Brakes on Beckett

Good news and semi-bad news on the Red Sox’s injury front today.

Mike Cameron was examined by a specialist today, and there are no significant problems with his lower abdomen. Instead, he has normal soreness that is to be expected considering the time he missed with the injury in the first place. Cameron won’t play tonight and tomorrow is a day game, so that could be a stretch. Friday in Baltimore? That might be pretty realistic.

“Good update,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona. “He was seen this morning. We ruled out any of the things that happened on the other side. There’s certainly some inflammation. It’s actually kind of deep. I think Cam feels a lot better knowing that, when this subsides, and it already is, it will be to the point where he can do everything he wants, he’s not going to hurt himself. Already, you see a little different look in his eyes. That was really good news. He’s not going to play tonight. I don’t know if he’s going to play tomorrow. And when he does play, like we talked about before, we’ll keep an eye on him. But that was really encouraging news.”

As for ace Josh Beckett, he likely won’t even pick up a baseball again for at least 10 days. Beckett had thrown an abbreviated side session last Friday, but the club didn’t like the execution of his delivery, and they are determined to be conservative with his lower back strain.

“We’re going to slow him down a little bit,” said Francona. “By that, probably, I don’t know if we’re going to have a firm timetable, but probably about 10 days. What we talked about the other day in the bullpen, the inconsistencies in his delivery, all of a sudden, when he’s doing that, we’re running into some lat discomfort, which we’re not comfortable with. We lean on this guy too much, or we need to. So until we can completely get back where he’s going through his delivery, we’re going to make him take it easy. I think he understands it. I don’t think he probably loves it.

“I think he realizes this is where his best interest ends up probably being our best interest, so we’re going to be pretty firm about this. He can do a lot of things, but when we get him back out there throwing, we don’t want him making any adjustments to his delivery, to his arm slot, because that’s where we run into problems.”

Victor Martinez is on the bench despite going 5-for-5 last night with four doubles. The reason? He still is recovering from that badly bruised big left toe and the Red Sox need Martinez to catch Tim Wakefield in Thursday’s day game.

In other news, the Red Sox won the daily double when it came to the American League’s Player and PItcher of the Month. David Ortiz was Player of the Month and Jon Lester earned pitching honors.

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Andy.. I wouldn’t look for Victor to be catching Dice K anytime soon. Dice K did everything but just come right out and say that it was Martinez’ fault for that awful outing he had acouple of weeks ago!

Congrats to Big Papi and Jon Lester on their Player of the Month honors. I am VERY glad both of them rebounded in May from their slow April starts. I am SO GLAD for Papi. I am more than happy to be wrong about Papi, esp. if he keeps it going for the rest of the year–we’ll have a much better chance at the post-season if he keeps his production going!
GO BIG PAPI! GO SOX!

Congrats to Lester and Ortiz. Lester turning things around was no surprise. Lester has always been a slow out of the gates. When Lester is on, he’s one of the best pitchers in the game. Personally I think he’ll end up going to the All Star game in July. I’ve heard many people on here and other places call him the “ace” of this staff, personally I go a step further and call him one of the “elite” pitchers in the game! If I was putting together a staff, he would be among the five hands down!

Ortiz hitting just about anything and everything in the month of May surprised me. I’ve always stated that he is approaching the 17th green in his career, I wonder about that now. He seems locked in and it didn’t matter who was pitching or what they were throwing, he was going to hit it somewhere with authority. His big bat in the lineup changes a lot of things. Youkilis and Beltre among others would attest to that. Ortiz is one of the main reasons why Boston has turned their season around. He’ll have some rough patches from this day and beyond but they will not last like they have in the past. His bat is lethal and now teams have to be very careful when Ortiz is in that box, if not he’ll do some damage!

Optimism on Cameron, I never thought I would ever read that headline. lol….

greg, bosox. couldn’t agree more on papi. i said when they didn’t sign holliday and opted for lackey theo was basically putting the pressure on him to carry the team offensively and earn that option year possibly. i was ready to give up on him at the end of april as well but i’ll gladly eat my crow. especially if he keeps it going. IMO he’s really the only guy in this lineup who can basically change the game. youk and v-mart ( and pedroia typically but not lately ) are very good major league hitters but none have the ability papi does to impact the game. my man dice. i’ve never seen a guy as night and day as him. well wake but that’s totally different. i just hope he can do that 2 out of 3 times instead of every other. this cameron situation is really wierd to me. i mean if you don’t know when the dude is gonna play. how much he is gonna be ABLE to play. and you know he’s not 100% when does play why not just DL him til you figure it out and get another able body? oh well. got a good chance to really get on a good roll with the next 8 against oak, balt., and cleveland. hopefully they take advantage. of course TB and NY actually losing a game occasionally would help to.

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